Projects

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Inaugural Exhibition of New Exhibition Space in Santa Fe: Porthole Projects: Porthole Projects is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition This Land is a Hand Game. Bringing together the work of a range of artists from Los Angeles, California, Providence, Rhode Island, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, this show explores the role of drawing in a contemporary multi-disciplinary art practice.

About Porthole Projects:Porthole Projects is a curatorial experiment and informal residency program located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Organized by Annabeth Marks, Lauren Fisher, and Nora Slade, it is a venue for exhibiting the work of contemporary artists in all media.

Drawing is an open field, free of the weight of other medium’s specific history and criticism. Because of this, drawing is crucial to each artist’s practice, as a way to cultivate ideas and metabolize thought. For each artist, drawing is the breeding ground for other projects, but also functions on its own as a body of work.

As a collection, these drawings share a common exploration of scale, as a means to move in and out of abstraction and figuration. In Jay Stuckey’s work what appears to be a field of linear abstraction reveals symbols and images. In Greg Dalton’s drawing, “Untitled,” ambiguous scale moves between what might be a grid-like abstraction, a microscopic view of the cellular structure of chlorophyll, or an aerial view of an architectural ruin. Molly Larkey’s colorful forms billow in and out of each other, sometimes interrupted by a collaged figurative element that confounds one’s sense of visual language. Abstraction and figuration is fluid in this collection of works on paper, allowing each artist to manipulate the perspective from which their work is viewed.

About the Artists:

L.A. based artist Jay Stuckey uses painting and drawing to exercise his visual memory bank of dreams. Creating spatial relationships in drawing in which cartoon-like symbolism falls away and reappears out of an abstract field, his drawings are a hallucinatory combination of abstraction and figuration. Jay’s recent exhibitions include a solo show at Strand On Volta in Washington, D.C., at the 16:1 Gallery in Santa Monica, CA, as well as a show at Abel, Raum Fur Neue Kunst in Berlin, Germany. He has also exhibited in group shows at the Long Beach Museum of Art in Long Beach, C.A., as well as the Jankar Gallery, Los Angeles.

Molly Larkey, a sculptor and painter from L.A., uses drawing as a way to deal with depth and flatness through color. Her drawing practice, immediate and gestural, compliments the time - based nature of her sculptures. Recent exhibitions include a two-person show at Sunday L.E.S., in New York, a solo show at the Project Room at PS1 Contemporary Arts Center in Long Island City, NY, and a forthcoming show, “The Shape of Things to Come” at Saatchi Gallery in London, U.K.

Nora Jane Slade, formerly of New York, just recently relocated to Santa Fe. Using the two dimensional surface as a way to deal with formal issues of drawing, she likes to characterize the imagery in her work as “Smart I Dumb, Funny I Tragic.” She has exhibited at Pratt University in Brooklyn, N.Y. and at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe.

Jessica Ciocci is a Providence, Rhode Island based artist. She is one third of Paper Rad, an art collective that works in video, sound, music and zines. In her works on paper, Jessica filters an over stimulated, color charged, consumer oriented society through abstraction.What is left is an abstract field infused with a digital aesthetic reminiscent of the visual language of video games or of sounds smashed up against each other. Jessica has exhibited at Foxy Productions in New York, at Deitch Projects in New York, at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, P.A., and is currently a part of a group show, Deterioration, They Said, at the Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst in Zurich, Switzerland.

Natalie Purkey, is an artist and co-founder of the Stairwell Gallery in Providence, RI. Natalie is interested in the line between our reality and that of a drug induced or dream reality.In her drawings she uses imagery that is inspired by neo-Victorian occult and 70’s German metal culture. She has exhibited at the Stairwell Gallery in Providence, at the Boston University 80 Gallery, M.A.,

Annabeth Marks, of Santa Fe, makes paintings, drawings and collage. Her paintings involve a time-based process of building up the two-dimensional surface into three-dimensional forms, a process that becomes a metaphor for relationships to the body and the grotesque. In her recent drawings, she layers iconic forms and symbols against expansive surreal spaces. Recent exhibitions include a group show at Roots and Culture Gallery, in Chicago, IL, a group show at the Gelman Gallery at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, and a two-person show at Launch Gallery in Providence, R.I. She will be in a forthcoming solo show at the Fisher Press in Santa Fe.

Also based in Providence, Joe Buzzell makes music, prints, drawings and paintings. In his two dimensional work he combines a futurist geometry with video game-like surreal architecture to create a narrative through space and process. Joe has exhibited at Space 1026 in Philadelphia, PA, at the Stairwell Gallery in Providence, R.I., and at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York City

A Santa Fe native, Michael Rae is an artist and musician. His drawings are an exercise in free association, depicting a vast hallucinatory world filled with devils and demons. Also a writer, his subject matter usually lends itself to the narratives of his stories and songs.He has exhibited in group shows at Together Gallery in Portland, OR, and at Site Santa Fe. Michael has also performed at the World Famous Kenton Club in St. Johns, OR.

Matt Greene, formerly of New York, now lives in Pecos, New Mexico. Working in a variety of media, his paintings and drawings explore themes of gender, sexuality and epistemology. Matt has had two solo exhibitions at Deitch Projects in N.Y., and has shown at Peres Projects in L.A. He is currently a part of Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection, curated by Jeff Koons at the New Museum in N.Y.

Greg Dalton, of Los Angeles, is both an artist and landscape designer. His interest in botany is a central theme in his work along with the way history is layered and fictionalized in archeology. Using these ideas, he creates narratives of built-up decay, imaginary plant and animal hybrid forms, and vast cellular structures. Greg has had a solo exhibition at Sea and Space Gallery in L.A., at 533 Gallery in L.A., and at Beyoglu Gallery in Istanbul, Turkey.He has a forthcoming solo show at Fingered Gallery, in N.Y.

Lauren Fisher, of Providence, works in a variety of mediums with a focus on large-scale installations, drawings and performance.In her interactive installations, Lauren uses architectural forms, as well as sound and light to create otherworldly, responsive environments that serve to challenge perceptions of space and experience. In her collaborative performances she focuses on using sound and the body to enact ambiguous narratives and create unusual spatial soundscapes. These explorations of impossible spaces, untenable structures, and abstruse narratives also inform the intricate worlds created in her drawings. Lauren has exhibited at the Stairwell Gallery in Providence, at Space 1026 in Philadelphia, andat Blutenweiss Gallery in Berlin, Germany.She has performed at PS1 in N.Y., at the Whitney Museum of American Art in N.Y. and at the Fringe Fest in New Orleans, LA.